Page 35 of The Seascape Between Us (The Men of Saltwater Cove #4)
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Daniel
I woke to the lilting chirp of birds, muffled through the window, and a vague sense of unease. For a moment, I lay stretched out on my back, blinking the sleep grit from my eyes and frowning in the sun-filled bedroom, until memory caught up with me. The storm. The hotel. Grey.
I rolled onto my side, but he wasn’t there.
Facing Grey’s side of the bed, I could see out the window.
We’d forgotten to close the drapes before going to sleep.
Outside, fluffy white clouds edged with gray streaked over a deep blue sky.
Between the birds and the clear sky, I could almost convince myself that last night’s storm hadn’t really happened, that all of it had just been some kind of anxiety-induced dream stemming from nerves about the grand re-opening.
I’d get out of bed, and yesterday would start all over—minus the catastrophic storm that had the potential to destroy everything we’d built over the past few months.
Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case. But the storm had passed and the birds were out. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as the weather forecasters had predicted.
Sliding out of bed, I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt before shuffling out to the living room. Grey sat on the sofa, laptop balanced on his lap.
“Is the power back?” I asked. Maybe the damage from the storm hadn’t been as bad as we feared.
Grey shook his head. “I’m working offline for as long as my battery will last, which will be about another twenty minutes.”
“How bad is it?”
Grey’s expression turned uncharacteristically serious. “Not great.”
I wove around the furniture to the window to see for myself.
Outside, despite the deceptively bright mid-morning sun and deep blue sky, the street looked like a war zone.
Broken branches, leaves stripped from the trees, and debris were scattered over the street and across lawns.
Someone’s garden gnome was face down in a puddle in the middle of our lawn.
Across the road, the huge maple tree in front of one of the summer rental houses had split in half, exposing the pale, inner wood like an open wound, the heavy trunk and leaf-covered branches stretched across the driveway.
Fortunately, there’d been no one staying there, so there were no cars in the driveway, but it was a hell of a mess.
If it was this bad up here, how bad had The Square’s main strip been hit? The hotel? Dread knotted my insides. As I turned away from the glass, I noticed Brody’s truck wasn’t in the driveway anymore.
“Did Brody leave?” I asked, turning back to Grey.
He nodded. “They went to check how the bar held up through the storm. If they couldn’t get down to the bottom of The Square, they were going to come back. That was close to an hour ago, so they must have made it back.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost ten-thirty.”
“Shit, why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
Grey’s gaze narrowed, his mouth pressing into a tight line. “Because you were exhausted after working yourself half to death yesterday; you needed the rest.”
I ducked my head and frowned. The way Grey looked out for me both warmed and annoyed me at the same time.
It had been years since anyone worried about whether I worked too hard, ate properly, or got enough sleep, and having someone care was a novelty.
But I’d looked after myself all these years, and I would again once Grey left.
I started to tell him he should have woken me sooner, but he held up his hand, cutting me off. “Whether we checked out the hotel first thing this morning or we go in a few hours, it’s not going to change anything. Get a coffee and something to eat, then we’ll head down.”
Intellectually, I knew he was right. Whatever had happened to the hotel, whatever time we got there wouldn’t change it.
Part way to the kitchen, I stopped and looked at Grey drinking from his mug. “Wait. How were you able to make coffee without any power?”
“Finn stopped by this morning to loan me his camping stove after they used it.”
Finn had been over? I must have really been out cold to have slept through all of that. “Finn and Alistair camp ? Who knew?”
Grey smirked and shrugged. “They took Will late last summer.”
I couldn’t quite picture Alistair camping. He was stylish and arty, and there was nothing rustic about him.
“How did they get through the storm? Any damage?” I filled the metal kettle, still sitting on the propane stovetop Grey had set up on the counter, from a bottle of water.
“Pretty good.” Grey joined me in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter with his arms folded over his chest. “There was no damage to their house, but that big fir tree on their lawn is leaning into the road. It’s probably going to have to come down.”
I leaned back against the counter facing him, mirroring his stance. “They were lucky. Us too, I guess.”
Grey nodded. “Mostly. There are shingles from the roof all over the backyard. I’ll probably have to have it replaced.”
“Before you sell it.”
“Sure,” he said, frowning. “Are you okay?”
Was I? Probably not. Anxiety pulled everything inside me taut, nerves crawling over my skin like invisible bugs.
I was antsy, restless, and the dread I’d woken with seemed to swell inside me like a gathering storm ready to sweep me away.
Still, I downplayed it. “Yeah. I’m worried about what we’re going to find though. ”
“If anything’s damaged, we’ll fix it,” Grey said, closing the short distance between us.
He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me into him.
I pressed myself flush against his chest, wrapping my arms around his waist and leaning down to tuck my face into the crook of his neck.
His lips grazed my ear, and I gripped him tighter.
I realized then what was making me so tense this morning, causing the buzzing under my skin.
It wasn’t just the hotel. It was a feeling that all of this—Grey, living in this house, and yes, the hotel too—was coming to an end.
That somehow, last night’s storm had rolled through and exposed everything I’d been hiding from since we got back from Portland, forcing me to face an inevitable future where Grey went back to his life and I went back to mine, but if I didn’t even have the hotel, what then?
“You have to relax.” His mouth brushed the side of my head. “Your wound too tight. I mean, if we fixed up the hotel once, we can do it again.”
I hoped he was right.
After a cup of what turned out to be the world’s worst instant coffee, Grey and I dressed and drove my truck to The Square.
We followed Oceanwind Lane down the hill and across Shore Drive until we hit the main strip of The Square.
Most of the bigger tree branches and other debris that littered the street had been moved off to the side, and anything that hadn’t, we’d been able to steer around.
At the main intersection, power crews were at work cleaning up fallen lines. We drove past them and hit the main strip, getting our first look at the damage the storm wreaked across The Square.
Like the top of the hill, the road was strewn with debris, loose shingles and siding, garbage, and even broken beach furniture.
Business owners and residents had started the laborious work of clearing away the mess.
A layer of sand buried most of the street, crunching under the tires as I steered towards the hotel.
There’d obviously been flooding, and the water must have risen high to have reached the road.
As we drew closer to the hotel, and I got my first look at it, I thought the building didn’t appear too bad, at least from the back. Some of the tension gripping me loosened. I pulled into the parking lot, the sand even thicker than on the road, and that small glimpse of relief dissipated.
“The flooding must have been bad,” Grey said, echoing my thoughts. I looked over at him, but his expression was inscrutable.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything else. I wasn’t sure I could. If the street and the parking lot had flooded, what did that mean for the rooms that faced the ocean?
Wordlessly, Grey and I got out of the truck.
We climbed the short set of stairs to the front doors and entered the hotel.
As soon as we stepped inside, I could hear the ocean, the hush of the surf and the waves slapping against the sand as if I were standing on the beach.
The salty tang of the water teased my nose.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Both Grey and I darted from the lobby into the restaurant. Two of the floor-to-ceiling windows that curved around the dining room were broken out. Jagged glass clung to the edges of the frames like a mouth of sharp teeth.
My legs turned rubbery under me, and I gripped the edge of the nearest table to keep from sinking to the floor.
More sand covered the wood floors, which were swollen and bowing in some places.
The tables and chairs had all been pushed towards the opening between the lobby and dining room, likely from the waves sweeping inside.
“We’re fucked,” I whispered.
“Everything can be fixed,” Grey said again, sounding less confident than he did before.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But not in less than a week. How long will it take to replace that glass or the floors? We haven’t even seen the rooms yet.”
Grey laced his fingers with mine and gave my hand a squeeze, but I barely felt it. Everything inside me was numb. “Come on.”
We made our way through the lobby, avoiding the puddles pooled on the floor.
We checked the rooms on the ground floor first. By some miracle, the window I hadn’t had time to board was still intact, but I could see staining about a third of the way up the side of the wall, indicating how high the water had gone.